***Again, I don’t always mention the water intake throughout the day, but water is so important!

This morning I woke up in Knoxville, Tennessee! Ashley and I got up early, left her grandparents’ house and went for a run at Jaycee Park in Clinton. The track is about a 0.9 mile loop that winds through some trees and has a fitness obstacle course set up along the path. Ashley told me ahead of time that the path was flat but that was indeed not true! We ran for 37 minutes because that was at the end of a loop and an easy place to stop despite what the training plan said: 40 minutes.

We headed back to her grandparents’ house. Today their family celebrated Christmas with her aunt, cousins and her brother. We hung out for a bit, had lunch with everyone and then opened gifts. We had a really nice day, overall!

That evening, Ashley, Chloe and I set out to find a Christmas gift for one of Ashley’s friends. We didn’t have any luck, but what we did find was a cool new hang out, a new hat, shirt and keychain. We had a great time and found a nice place called The Casual Pint to visit when we are in town!

With that being said, I have not been following the plan the way I should be. I have had a few things (including some bread and potatoes, neither of which are part of the plan) that I shouldn’t have had. I was doing really well with this until I went away on my work trip and lost motivation.

I am hoping to do my best to stick with it through the holidays, but really get serious about it when I get back from my trip to Chicago. It’s much easier for me to follow when the food is made ahead of time and no matter how the schedule changes, as long as I’m home or plan ahead, I have my meal laid out for me when I am ready for it. This is proof (not that I didn’t already know) that it is difficult to keep a healthy lifestyle when life gets in the way!

**Fun fact: water has become the second most popular drink for Americans. Fluid loss occurs continuously throughout the day. Dehydration occurs when someone’s water intake does not equal or outweigh their output. Remember, in warmer climates, in higher altitudes and in older adults, fluid loss occurs faster.

I really need to work on this getting-up-early thing. I have good intentions…I even set my clothes out last night but it’s very difficult for me to get out of bed any earlier than I absolutely have to. Needless to say, I did not go swim this morning. I’ll never finish the triathlon this way! How do you motivate yourself to get out of bed in the morning? Comment, please!

Today at work we had our Christmas luncheon. Food was catered by Chef Christopher, and it all smelled delicious. The only part I could have, though, was sliced turkey and green beans. I did sneak a few bites of the stuffing and I had a potato, but that was not part of the plan. I did skip the pie. 🙂

I didn’t plan a workout today. I figured I would get up tomorrow morning and go swim.

I ended up eating my breakfast after I finished my exhausting swim. I wasn’t hungry ahead of time and didn’t want to eat just before swimming. I wasn’t sure how the workout would go so I decided to wait. I did drink some water ahead of time, though, because I always get thirsty when I swim. It’s easy to forget that when swimming, we still sweat and we still need water!

The swimming workout was great! I loved it, but it was very difficult! A friend of mine got me in the pool a couple of years ago and I fell back in love with swimming. I hadn’t pushed myself too much, though; all I did was swim laps. It had been years (about 15-20) since someone had told me what to do and given me drills to practice.

We were in a 25 m pool and we used two lanes; we had two people in each lane.

Here is what we did during our swim:
200 warm up
6 x 50 finger drag drill
400 free
4 x 25 hands down, swimming on our side to work on keeping our hips up. This was hard because I kept getting water up my nose!
2 x 25 with 1 hand forward (this should have been 4 but I had to leave early). I also missed the cool down since I had to leave to go to work.

David and Amy wore us out! I was hungry for the rest of the day! I was also very thirsty and made sure I drank a lot of water throughout the day. I knew I was dehydrated from the swimming, although I felt like I swallowed enough of it during the last two drills…

Tonight was my night to work at the restaurant. We had a very busy day at my day job and then when I headed to the restaurant, it was busy right away. I was steadily busy all night long. I finished up a little after 9 pm and was able to grab a side salad for dinner when I got home. I wasn’t too hungry but I still knew I needed to eat something, especially since I have a workout planned for early tomorrow morning. I have some sort of level of food I can eat and not be hungry in the morning. If I eat too much the night before I wake up and I’m starving. I wonder if that happens to anyone else….

This was my first day back in the office after a week out of town on business. I was on eastern time last week but it was still hard to get up in the morning and get back into the swing of things. Luckily I had someone willing to make my breakfast for me so I had time to grab it and run out the door without being late to work. 🙂

Since I didn’t get out of bed any earlier than I absolutely had to, I grabbed some Lara bars to take with me as my snack. I had one around 9:30 and then was good until lunch.

For lunch I had some amazing grilled chicken with stir-fry veggies. With a little low-sodium soy sauce they tasted great. I had the same thing for dinner.

As far as workouts go, I probably should have done something in the morning, but since I got up so late I didn’t. On my Team in Training (TNT) workout plan, today was a rest day…so I won’t feel too guilty. 🙂

We are almost two weeks in at this point! I’m still trying to get back on track with my eating since I was gone all week and didn’t prepare my foods as well as I would have, had I had the chance. We had some eggs in the morning and got settled in for a lazy Sunday morning. That was until we got the text from Kathy saying she was back in town and going to tailgate before the Titans game. We then headed downtown for tailgating. We grabbed a bag of gluten free chips and some salsa, and headed downtown.

As usual, there were a few tables full of good food awaiting us when we arrived. However, most of it was not on the approved list of paleo-friendly foods. I had some GF chips, some sausage balls (I’m sure those weren’t on the list either) and the pork from the pork sandwiches that our friends Ricky and Jamie brought. I was semi-good and only drank water/diet coke…no alcohol.

I wasn’t really hungry for dinner that night but I found a few things to pick at.